Terminal World
by Erol carstein
Summary: Inspired by Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds. Canterlot, the last equine city. A vast, atmosphere piecring metropolis were your level of comfort in life depends on how high up you are born. When a ghost from the past turns up in the morgue, Twilight Sparkle, a pathologist from Neon Heights. must face her past, and an even that will reshape not just Canterlot, but the whole world
1. Prologue

___And in that time, before the gates of paradise were closed to them, mares and stallions were as foals._

And so bountiful were the treasures and fruits of paradise that they lived four-score years, and some lived yet longer.

And in that time Equestria was warm and blue, and many were its provinces.

So it was that the Pre Equines came together and built Canterlot, so that they might transcend the mortal plain and become one with the divine.

Up and up they built. Until so vast was the spire, so majestic in its grandness, that it pierced the heavens themselves.

And so it was that Faust turned her eye to the Godscraper, and sent her alicorns to watch over it.

For none who are mortal may possess the key to become immortal.

But the Pre Equines of that day knew no honour, no loyalty, only greed.

And so did they rebel against the alicorns, and waged war on one another for control of the Godscraper.

And in her anger, Faust did turn her fury on Equestria.

So it was that the Eye of Faust burnt through the world, and the gates of paradise were sealed.

They have not opened since


	2. Chapter one: A hidden past

The call came in to the Department of Public Hygiene sometime near eight in the evening, something about a mess way out on the eastern ledge. No one was quite sure where it had come from, maybe it had come from the fourth ledge? Or maybe even as high up as Circuit City?

But, since it was their job over at the department of public hygiene to deal with stuff like that, a dispatcher wearily glanced at the decade old tracking map on the wall and noted that a clean-up crew than was close enough to make the call.

It was one of the older vans, and he knew the ponies who worked it well. Taking a drag on his cigarette, the dispatcher lifted the phone with a wing whilst his hoof spun the dial, listening to the clunk of the buildings switch board as it patched him through.

≤ΘΘΘ≥

With a faint whirring and the drawl metallic noise of metal against metal the phone began to ring loudly, causing the dashboard to shake ever so slightly. Sighing loudly with apparent exasperation, Thunderlane reached across the dashboard with a wing and picked up the receiver of the phone, bringing it up to his ears without taking a hoof off the wheel.

"Three oh seven here" he drawled in a tired voice, scratching at the stubble on his cheek with a hoof. Beside him, his partner in crime, Windfree, pulled his face out of his customary bag of donuts, his eyes glancing over to Thunderlane before realizing that it was just another office call and turning his attention to a more pressing and interesting matter: the consumption of his Sugar Cube Corner donuts.

"Thunder, it's Tombs here" a voice crackled in the receiver, its harsh scratch causing Thunderlane to pull the phone away from his ear slightly. "I've got another one for you, a faller. The guy came down on the eastern ledge, just short of the waterworks. You should be able to reach him if you take the service duct under Seventh and Electric out to the ledge. There's not a whole lotta stuff out there so he should be real easy to find, the blue key on your jumpsuit should get you through any municipal locks in the way" Thunderlane sighed again and raised a hoof to scratch at the bridge of his muzzle, closing his eyes. His other fore hoof tapped irritably at the steering wheel of the van as the pegasus vented his frustration.

"Come on, Tombs. Don't do this to me; we're fully loaded in the back and only a couple of minutes from coming off shift. Can't you pass it over to another van?"

"Sorry, Thunder, that's a no can do. At this time of night it'll take another van at least a half hour to get out there, and if we leave the body any longer it's gonna start stinking up and drawing a crowd, not to mention rigor mortis could begin to set in. Just suck it up and earn some overtime"

Thunderlane groaned lightly and massaged the bridge of his muzzle. "Fine, we're on our way. But we're seriously loaded up in the back, make sure another van meets us there or we'll have to stick him in the back with the others, and I'm not gonna make any promises that he'll keep"

"I'll get on it. Call back in once you've peeled him off the floor; I'll get started on the paper work. Oh, and watch your step out on the ledge. It's a long way down and I don't wanna have to call our counterparts in Geartown and tell 'em they got a couple of fallers of their own they need to deal with" with that the dispatchers voice was replaced with the monotonous sound of the dial tone. Thunderlane returned the phone to its holster on the dashboard and sunk into his seat, sighing as he contemplated at least another half-hour on the job.

"Another faller?" Windfree asked, pulling out yet another donut from the paper bag in his hooves. He eyed the piece of baked confectionery with an apprising look before shoving it whole into his maw and biting down on the soft pastry, sending a jet of strawberry jam flying to land with a splat on the mucky dashboard.

Thunderlane rolled his eyes at the display as Windfree leaned forward and ran a hoof through the trail of jam, raising it to his mouth and licking his hoof clean. "Yeah, some guy landed out on the ledge by Seventh and Electric" the Pegasus leaned over to Windfree. "Gimme one of those" he said, plucking a chocolate donut from the paper bag. Windfree shot him a dirty look before returning to chewing on his own donut, which had left a sugary frosting all along his lips. "Another fucking ledge job" Thunderlane grumbled as he took a bite out of his pastry treat. "And they know how much I fucking love ledge jobs"

"Come on, Thunder, suck it up and earn some over time like Tombs said. A job's a job, and over time rates ain't too bad"

"You're only saying that because you've got a sweet tooth for donuts and expensive marefriends"

"It's called having a life outside of peeling meat-pancakes off the street, Thunder. You should really try it sometime; it's one hell of a party"

Muttering something derogatory to himself, Thunderlane reached down with a wing tip to pull on the flywheel switch, before backing the van up into a pickup slot and driving out onto the main road. As Luna's moon continued to rise overhead traffic was indeed beginning to thicken, vehicles stacked up almost nose to tail on the roadways as traffic moved sluggishly around the cities spiral, drifting like some great lazy river of metal.

Being in a municipal vehicle, the two ponies could engage the vans electric engine and go off-slot if they wanted, but that would still require detailed knowledge of the flow of traffic at this time of night to prevent getting snarled up. Sometimes Thunderlane liked to think that he should quit working in a clean-up crew and become a taxi driver. Except corpses didn't require any need to make conversation, and Windfree, who often had his muzzle shoved in a bag of donuts anyway, didn't particularly count.

It took them twenty minutes to reach Seventh and Electric, the flow of traffic conspiring at every red light to hold them up just a little longer. The service duct was accessed via a sloping ramp between two decrepit buildings, facing out from Canterlot. Disengaging the pickup line that connected them to the slot, Thunderlane engaged flywheel to take the van down the slope, though he wasn't sure if he'd have enough spin left in the axle to get them back up once the job was done.

Climbing out of the van, Thunderlane reached back in to grasp a ring of keys off the dashboard and close the door, the vehicle rocking slightly as he did so. Windfree emerged from the other side of the van, a heavy police style torch strapped to his head and a camera on a loop around his neck. Across his back was a saddle bag stuffed full of all the necessary equipment needed to document anything they might come across.

Normally the police would be on hoof for situations such as these, but recently they'd been falling behind after Mare Mayor had declared a greater effort was needed in tackling street crime. As a result they were perfectly happy to let the clean up crews deal with any fallers as long as everything was documented and the paperwork filled out correctly. If anything fishy showed up in the report the police would get involved further down the line, but mostly the fallers were just victims of unfortunate accidents.

Thunderlane had no reason to suspect anything different this time round.

Unlocking the municipal gate with a key from the loop, Thunderlane and Windfree made their way down the dank service duct. The place reeked like a sewer, water runoff seeping down cracks in the floor to form a foul smelling little stream. Bits of cladding where peeling off from the roof, lying in small piles here and there every few meters or so.

At the end of the duct was a half circle of indigo sky, a faint breeze flowing through the opening occasionally to blow away the ripe smell of decay in the tunnel. Emerging out from the tunnel, Thunderlane took a deep breath of fresh air, his wings opening slightly at the sight of so much empty sky.

This far out on the ledge it didn't take a whole lot to absorb the sounds of the city. The rattle of commuter trains as they wound their way up and down the cities lazy tapering spiral, or the whine of police sirens as they sped from one crime scene to another. It was a lot quieter out here, and a whole lot fresher, with the wind blowing straight in from the open plains that surrounded the city, completely free from pollutants or vehicle exhaust.

Beyond the service duct, the concrete gave way to Canterlots underlying fabric. No one had ever bothered to really give the plain, jet black substance a name, for it was as ubiquitous as air. But for the sake of municipal purposes it was known as Megastructure.

From the point were the two ponies stood, the ledge was seemingly flat. But over to the left it began to rise and curve round with the cities spiral, and to the right it gently sunk downwards. Thunderlane watched his footing warily as he stepped out onto the Megastructure. The stuff was treacherous, everypony knew that. It felt as firm as rock one moment and then became as slippery as ice in the blink of an eye.

Windfree slowly stepped out beside Thunderlane, his torch scanning all around for the faller. There was about fifty or so meters between the backs of the buildings and the shear drop of the ledge, a bleak, featureless no-man's land where anything stuck out. "There's our guy" the earth pony said, tapping on Thunderlanes shoulder and pointing off to the right, down the gentle curve of the spiral. "Unicorn by the looks of him"

Thunderlane nodded in recognition. "I see it"

They walked in steady, sideways steps as the structure sloped downwards, both uncomfortably aware that one slip was all it would take for them to land flat on their backs and slide helplessly down the curve and over the edge.

As they neared Thunderlane glanced over at the body, just able to make out some features in the dimming light. He spied a horned head and four legs, all where they should be, and something crumpled underneath the body, like some kind of translucent paper gown.

You could never be too sure with fallers ... but this guy didn't look like he had fallen very far.

Dismemberment was commonplace amongst fallers, since heads and legs had a penchant for popping free from the body either from impact with the ground or glancing collisions with the sides of buildings as the body bumped back and forth before coming to a messy, bone crunching halt. This jigsaw, however, seemed to come with all the pieces put together.

Thunderlane glanced upwards at the gleaming sky, lit up with both stars and the distinct glow of the advertisement boards of Neon Heights. As far as he could make out, he couldn't see any buildings or overhangs that the body could have fallen off, and even if this guy had taken a running jump from the nearest ledge there was no way he would end up all the way out here, there was at least a half of a league or so of dropback before the next ledge came rearing up out of Neon Heights. Plus there should have been a lot more damage, a whole lot more. Something about this just didn't sit right with the pegasus.

"Something's seriously screwed up here" Thunderlane voiced, glancing over to Windfree.

"Just starting to feel that way myself" Windfree replied, raising the camera to his eye with a single hoof and snapping off an exposure. The two ponies slowly crept further forwards, hardly daring to breath as the corpse came closer and closer. When they were about ten or so meters out Windfree directed his torch at the body much more steadily, the beam illuminating the faller in his entirety.

That's when Thunderlane realised what they were dealing with here. That wasn't a gown crumpled under the faller's body; it was a pair of wings.

"It's ... " Windfree began.

"Yeah"

The creature that lay sprawled on the floor wasn't a unicorn as they'd first believed; it was an alicorn, an actual alicorn.

Thunderlane looked up again, but higher this time. He looked up beyond the nearest line of buildings, beyond the electrical flicker of Neon Height. Up beyond the shimmering holographic mirages of Circuit City. Up past the pink plasma aura of the Cyber Polities. He could just make them out against the twinkling backdrop of deep space, circling and wheeling leagues overhead as faint pastel pink specks around the tapering needle of Canterlots spire, like insects around a bug zapper.

And as he saw them flying up there, as he saw the Post Equine alicorns dance and caper so high above the realm of mortal ponies, immortal creatures who were destined to see the entirety of time in all its immeasurable glory, a single thought ran on a repeating loop in his head, spinning like a broken record '_How the fuck did one of you lot end up all the way down here? And why the fuck did it have to happen on my shift?_'

"Let's bag, tag, and get the hell out of here" Windfree said, a grim look on his face. "That thing's starting to creep me out already"

"You ever dealt with one of these ... creatures before?"

"Nope, first time. You?"

"The first time I ever saw one up close like this was about ten years ago, when I was new on the job. The bastard came down on the green line elevated right onto the live rail, the thing was toast by the time we managed to get up there and scrape it off. The second time was about four or five years later, when one of them came down over in Cheap Side. Not much left from the impact though, just some bloody shreds. Nothing much you could recognize at first glance"

Windfree gulped and nodded again, raising his hoof once more to snap of a couple of exposures. In the flash of light that followed, Thunderlane had the freakish sensation that the corpse had just twitched, shifting almost subliminally from one position to another to give its photographer the best shot.

Thunderlane steadily approached the alicorns body, kneeling down beside it and pulling his equipment from the pockets in his jumpsuit. The pegasus examined the creature beside him, taking in its near alien form. Surprisingly, it seemed that only the alicorns wings were the broken part of its body. It had come to rest with its head lolling to one side, huge midnight blue eyes staring up at Thunderlane. It could have been alive if he didn't know any better, but there was no movement behind those eyes, no life. There was only death and silence.

"Damn alicorn must have been alive for the whole trip down" he said. "This was a controlled landing, not a crash landing. It's the only way to explain the lack of blood"

Windfree looked over at his partner before raising the camera and taking another shot. "You reckon this was a suicide?" he asked, lowering the camera. "I don't know much about taking your own life, but I'm guessing that going through at least three or four state changes in one night isn't exactly the most peaceful way to go. You think maybe it just ... you know, lost its way?"

"I ... I doubt it. alicorns spend their whole lives up in the Celestial Levels. They do more flying in a month then most pegausi do in their whole lives" Thunderlane gently lifted one of the creatures wings, marveling at how light the organic construct was. Compared to the alicorns, Thunderlanes wings felt like they were made out of granite. Shrugging, he looked across to his partner, his brow furrowing slightly. "Hell, who knows how it got down here? Let's just bag him, tag him, and get the hell out of here, the sooner he's out of our hooves the better, I say" Thunderlane stood up, groaning slightly as he stretched his wings. "Sweet Celestia, I need a stiff drink"

Opening up Windfree's saddlebags, they had the alicorn bagged and tagged in good order, ensuring to shoot a deent amount of exposures for law enforcement once they got involved. Taking care not to worsen the damage or break any of the alicorns twig like bones, Thunderlane hauled the now body bag encased corpse across his back. The sensation of the creatures weight on his back, or more rather, the lack of the sensation, unsettled Thunderlane to no end. Carrying the corpse of an alicorn was like carrying a sack of bones and little else. They didn't even need to hose down the ground when they were done, not a single drop of whatever passed for blood within the alicorns body had been spilt.

There was no sign of another van waiting for them when they got back, annoying Thunderlane to no end. Climbing up into his seat, the Pegausi leaned across the dashboard and plucked the phone from its holster with a wing tip, whilst his hoof spun the dial.

"Talk to me Thunder" came Tomb's scratchy voice once the receiver had been patched through. "Have you got the faller?"

"Yeah, we got him, but I don't see another van anywhere. I told you that we're loaded up in the back, we don't have any more room"

"Sorry Thunder, I had to send them down to the boundary with Geartown. There's been a report of a zone shift and we needed a clean crew on hoof in case of any fatalities"

"Well, you might wanna rethink that decision" Thunderlane spoke, glancing across at Windfree "Turns out that the faller was an alicorn, no joke"

The silence that followed could only be described as skeptical.

"We've had no reports of anything falling from the Levels. Circuit City would have given us a notification if something had, and the Cyber Polities would be up in arms by now if an alicorn had passed through their airspace"

"This one didn't fall, he flew down"

"As they do" the skepticism in the dispatches voice was plain to hear. After all, this wouldn't be the first time that somepony had faked an alicorns corpse for their own twisted amusement. For all Thunderlane knew this body could have been a prank played on him by one of the other crews to test how gullible he was.

But no, one look was all it took to convince him that this one was the real deal.

"Look, if you want us to squeeze the alicorn in the back with the rest of the bodies, we will. But you've gotta understand that I'm not taking any responsibility for any breakages that might occur. So, do you want us to ship this thing over to Third?"

"If you think it's the real deal, then that's the only place to send it"

"I'll take the fall if it's not"

The dispatcher sighed, the voice transmitting through the connection as a rustling spit of static "Alright, take him over to third. Just make sure that anything technical gets bagged up separately. Once you've dropped the body off at Third, we'll box it all up and send it over to imports for shipping back to up the Levels. Now get to it, I'll phone ahead and tell the morgue to prep one of the surgeries"

Thunderlane hung up the receiver.

"Why Third? We never deal with Third" Windfree asked, a frown on his face.

Shifting aside the frozen bodies of other fallers that they had picked up during the day, Thunderlane and Windfree stowed the alicorns body on a shelf in the back of the van before climbing back into the cabin of the van. Thunderlane fly wheeled the van back up the ramp and onto a pick up slot, once more becoming absorbed into the flow of traffic that ran the length of Neon Heights.

It was a twenty minute drive to Third District Morgue, the van filled with a tense silence. The minds of both ponies were fixed on the Post Equine entity that was currently stiffening in the back of their van, separated from them from only a few sheets of metal, some coolant pipes, and the thin fabric of the body bag.

≤ΘΘΘ≥

Third District Morgue of Neon Heights was a drear building to say the least. Situated towards the center of the ledge, the building was an ash grey slab of concrete, its monotonous surface punctured occasionally by the yellow glow of light escaping through one of the windows. It sat lower than the buildings around it, hunched over like some small child, whilst the apartment blocks and offices on either side loomed over it, jostling with each other for space.

Thunderlane circled the van round to the back of the building and pulled up into one of the delivery bays, the engine cutting out with a grating cough as he pulled his key from the ignition.

Waiting for them was a white coated unicorn clerk, a notepad telekinetically held in his grip. "A dispatcher from the Department of Public Hygiene phoned in a couple of minutes ago" he informed Thunderlane, as the pegasus circled to the back of the van and unlocked the rear double doors. "Said you had something juicy for Twilight?" The stallion itched his nose with the pen. "Twilight was starting to think that maybe you lot had forgotten the arrangement"

"As if anyone could forget an arrangement that weird" Thunderlane snorted, taking the pen and scribbling his name on the delivery form.

"Erm, what are you two on about?" Windfree asked, hopping up into the van and gently lifting the body bag containing the alicorn onto his back.

"Twilight likes to have first dibs on anything freaky that falls in Neon Heights" the clerk explained. "It's just this weird little hobby that she has"

"To each their own" Thunderlane muttered, shrugging.

"Plus is saves the other morgues from having to wade through a mountain of paper work, there's always a lot of triplicate to do when one of these things makes it down here" The clerk peered at the bagged form as Windfree lowered it down to Thunderlane, who set it gently across his back. "So ... do you mind if I take a look?"

"Knock yourself out"

The clerk leaned in and unzipped the body bag, peeling it back to reveal the alien creatures features, serenely calm in death "They look so beautiful don't they? When they're flying about so far up there in the sky, glowing and all" The clerk zipped the bag back up, hiding the alicorn from sight.

"Give the guy a break" Thunderlane said. "he's had a rough day"

"You're sure it's a he?"

"Well, now that you mention it ... "

"Twilight is just outside the surgery, so head on in. I gotta stay down here and take more deliveries"

"Rough night?"

"Rough week's more like it. The boundaries getting shifty again, it's causing all kinds of trouble"

"yeah same here" Thunderlane said, nodding in agreement. "The departments been running errands around the boundary zone for about a week now. Guess we better batten down the hatches and get our watches wound"

Nodding goodbye to the clerk, they stepped inside the building through the back door. The morgue was all green walls and white tiles, the air filled with the eye watering chlorine reek of industrial strength cleaning fluids. The lights in the ceiling had been dimmed down, casting dark shadows at every corner. Thunderlane hated the morgue, how the hell could anypony willingly work in a building where they cut open dead bodies? At least being in a cleanup crew meant that he got some fresh air.

They laid the body bag out on a wheeled stretcher and took a freight elevator to the third floor. Once the machine had come to a grumbling stop, Thunderlane pulled back the trellis work door and pushed the stretcher out into another dark corridor. Twilight was waiting for them at the far end by a pair of double doors, flicking a cigarette butt at a wall mounted ash tray.

It had been four years since Thunderlane had last seen Twilight Sparkle, but he recognized the mare instantly. There wasn't a whole lot about the unicorn that ever really changed.

"When I heard that there was a delivery coming, I was hoping for some new medicine" Twilight said in her calm, measured voice. "If the cupboards where any bearer, we'd have to start turning away dead people"

"Be nice, Twilight" Thunderlane replied. "We've brought you a present"

"How's work, Thunderlane?"

"Up's and down's, Twilight. Up's and down's. But whilst there's a city and it's full of ponies, something tells me that you and I won't have to worry about losing our jobs any time soon"

Twilight had always been thin, slightly gaunt on the edges, but now she looked like she had opened her eyes and just crawled off one of the dissection tables herself. The white surgical coat seemed to hang off her frame like it was on a coat hook, and her purple fringed mane, complimented by a single pink stripe, was covered with a white surgical cap, her horn peaking out through a hole at the front. She wore tinted glasses, even though the lights of the morgue were far too dark anyway. The hooves on her forelegs where covered in green latex gloves, the hooves themselves looking gaunt and skeletal underneath their taut coverings. The shadows under her cheeks bones seemed deeper than last time, giving her face a sort of sunken, skeletal look.

Everything about the mare seemed to evoke the image of a corpse.

'_No getting away from it_' Thunderlane thought to himself. '_The girl's found an ideal place for employment_'

"So what have you got for me?"

"We've got you an alicorn, my friend. He's just come down on the ledge"

Twilight's reaction was hard to judge behind the glasses, any flicker of emotion hidden behind their tint. The rest of her face didn't seem to move much, even when she spoke. "All the way down from the Celestial Levels?"

"That's what we figured. Funny thing is though, there doesn't seem to be much sign that it was going fast when it crashed. From what we could garner at the site, seems like this guy made a controlled landing ... or at least a controlled descent"

"That's interesting" Twilight said in an uninflected tone of someone who would be hard pressed to think of anything less interesting. But Thunderlane wasn't sure.

"What you've got is essentially a naked corpse with wings and a horn" Thunderlane smirked slightly. "I'm sure you'd find that interesting enough"

"That is what we deal with here" Twilight said, either oblivious of the joke or just ignoring it outright.

"Do you ... erm ... cut many of these things open?" Windfree asked.

"The odd one or two, I can't say that they drop in with any great amount of regularity. Have we met?"

"I don't think so" Windfree replied "what is it about alicorns that you like so much?"

At that twilight paused, her mouth twitching slightly into a faint smile. "I wouldn't say that 'like' comes into it, more rather that cutting open alicorns is a sort of specialty of mine. That's all it is. We're set up for it down here after all. We've got the positive pressure room in case anything toxic boils out of them and blast-proof doors as well, just in case things really do go south. Plus, when you're all done, the paperwork is fairly routine" Twilight shrugged. "Way I see it, an alicorn isn't that much different from a regular pony, the only difference is that they're a rarity"

"Takes the pressure off other morgues as well" Thunderlane added in. "Not everyone likes to deal with Post Equines"

Twilight flexed her scrawny neck, a faint popping sound emerging from under the skin. "Everypony's a winner"

There was an awkward moment. The two of them by the trolley, Twilight with her green gloves and Thunderlane fidgeting slightly.

"Well I guess we're done here" Thunderlane said, passing Twilight a file from his jumpsuit pocket. "The docket has everything you need to know. Most of its fairly routine, usual details and all. Once you're done with the bag, send it back to Hygiene and Works, but make sure you hose it down first"

"I'll see to it" Twilight replied, taking the docket in her telekinetic grip and flipping through a few pages, glancing at several of the notes present.

"Well then, until next time" Thunderlane said, nodding his goodbyes as he backed up into the still open elevator.

"Until next time" Twilight nodded, raising a hoof in farewell.

"It was great meeting you" Windfree added, raising his own hoof.

Thunderlane pulled the doors shut with a screech, and the elevator began to descend, the motor rumbling at the top of the shaft like some grumbling beast stirring in its sleep.

≤ΘΘΘ≥

Twilight stood still in the corridor, until the display above the elevator told her that it had reached the ground floor. She slowly trotted up to the stretcher, gave the docket another brief inspection, and then wheeled the stretcher into the surgical room, donned a surgical mask and transferred the bag onto the dissection plinth before carefully magically removing the alicorn from the bag.

It seemed to Twilight, that even in death the alien creature that was the alicorn seemed unnaturally beautiful. She placed the alicorn on its back, its eyes closed. Its wings hung listlessly over the edges of the plinth, their tips gently brushing against the tiled floor. Under the hard lights of the dissection plinth, its white coat was ghost pale.

Not expecting to be disturbed, she removed her glasses.

Taking a moment before the autopsy began, Twilight gave the creature a look over, her eyes running up and down its body. The alicorn was thin, as was all of its kind. Its limbs were spindly and skeletal, the skin seemingly pulled taut over the bone, with only small groups of muscle standing out with any real definition. The alicorns mane was a thick mixture of light and dark blues, the bands of colour organised into stripes. For a few moments more she admired the creature, its alien body and unusual aesthetics, before sighing and getting back to work.

After all, a corpse was just a corpse. And like all corpses that were brought to the morgue, it needed to be cut open.

She pushed a squeaky wheeled trolley to the side of the dissection plinth, pulling aside the green cloth covering to reveal a selection of medical tools. There were scalpels, gleaming forceps, bone saws, sterile scoops for removing tissue, spatulas, and a multitude of glass receptacles for storing tissue samples in. Once she would have found such implements as laughably crude, but now they came to mind with a comforting familiarity.

A microphone dangled from the ceiling, Twilight tugged it closer to her face and threw a heavy rocker switch on its side, activating the microphone with a deep clunk of metal on metal. Somewhere beyond the room in one of the buildings technical bays, a tape recorder began to run. She cleared her throat, glancing to the row of clocks on the wall.

"Dr Twilight Sparkle speaking, the time is now nine-fifteen. Beginning autopsy of corpse, docket number is five eight three three four. Recently delivered to the Third District Morgue by the Department of Public Hygiene"

She paused and cast her eyes over the corpse; the appropriate observations springing to mind with minimum conscious thought.

"Initial indications suggest that the subject is an alicorn, probably adult male. alicorn appears to be undamaged apart from impact damage to the wings. There is some longitudinal damage to the limbs and sub-dermal swellings, recent enough to suggest that they might be contributing factors to the alicorns death. However, the limbs are otherwise uninjured with no signs of any major breaks or dislocation. Indications are that the alicorns descent was controlled until the last moment, at which point it fell with enough force to inflict damage to the wings but not to cause any visual damage to the rest of its body. Reason for the descent is unknown, however, the cause of the death is likely to be due to massive maladaptive trauma through exposure to multiple zones, rather then impact with the ledge"

She paused again, letting the tape keep recording, whilst she reached for a syringe with a hoof. She plunged the needle into a small rubber capped bottle, one of the last dozen such bottles in the morgues inventory, ensuring not to take more then was strictly necessary.

"In accordance with protocol, I am now administering a lethal dose of Morphax-55, to ensure final morbidity"

She leaned over the alicorn and lowered the needle until the tip was just over its chest, millimeters away from piercing the white coat. In the nine years that she had been working as a pathologist, Twilight had cut open hundreds of equine bodies. Some had been victims of accidents, medical negligence, or homicide. But she had only dissected eleven alicorns.

That was still more than most pathologists ever did in their whole career.

"Commencing injection of" she began.

The alicorns left hoof suddenly whipped over and seized her hoof, moments before the needle entered its body.

"Stop" it said.

There was a moment of silence, before Twilight continued. "The alicorn is still alive" she spoke into the microphone, not taking her eyes off of the creature. "It has expressed visual awareness, comprehension, and fine motor control. I will now attempt to alleviate the subjects suffering by ... "

She hesitated and looked into the dying creatures eyes, which were fully alert and terrifyingly focused on her own. The alicorn still had her hoof in a vice like grip, the needle hanging like a dagger over its skin.

"Let me do this" Twilight told the creature. "It will help ease the pain, stop your suffering"

"You mean it'll kill me" the alicorn said, speaking slowly and with visible effort, as if it had barely enough air in its lungs to make a sound.

"You're going to die anyway"

"Break it to me nicely, why don't you?"

"There's nothing nice to break, you've fallen out of the Celestial Levels and into Neon Heights. You're cells can't take it, even if we could get you back home, the damage has already been done" Twilight paused for a moment before deciding to say what she knew both her and the alicorn were thinking. "You're a dead pony"

"You think I don't know that?" The alicorns piping, foal-like voice was just deep enough to confirm that it was a male. "I know what's going to happen, but I don't want your medicine. Now then, will you answer my questions truthfully?"

"If you have any to ask, then yes I will" Twilight replied.

"Are you Twilight Sparkle?"

Twilight was silent for a few seconds. She had often wondered how it would happen when her pursuers finally caught up with her; though she had never imagined that the encounter would take place in the morgue. She had always assumed that the time would come in some dark alley, or in her own apartment as she arrived home.

A shadow moving into view, a glint of metal, the sound of a blade as it sliced through the air, and then ... that would be the end of it.

"Of course" she said with as much dignity and calm as she could muster, trying to prevent her voice from trembling.

"That's good, they said I'd be brought to you" the alicorn grinned weakly, evidently pleased with its triumph.

"Who said that?" though Twilight was certain of the answer, it never hurt to know who had ordered her death. After all, she didn't even remember them anymore.

"The ponies who sent me here, of course. You don't think any of this happened by chance did you?"

Twilight thought about killing the alicorn then and there, she still had the Morphax-55 in hoof, poised to deliver its deadly payload. But the alicorn knew she was capable of that, and was still talking. Twilight had no idea what its end game could possibly be, but something told her she should hear the creature out. So, she decided to ask the most obvious question.

"So then, why did you fall?"

"Because I chose to. This was the quickest, if not least risky way of reaching you" The alicorn shuddered, bloody flecks leaving its mouth as a raking cough overcame it, when it came around the creature continued. "I was under no illusion. I knew this was a suicide mission, and that I would not be returning to the Celestial Levels. But still I fell, and stayed alive long enough to reach you. They say that when an alicorn falls into Neon Heights, it gets brought to Twilight Sparkle for autopsy. Is that true?"

"Most of the time"

"I can see why that would work for you" The creature quipped, smiling faintly. Its lips quivering slightly as the muscles struggled to maintain the expression.

"Can you?"

"Yes, Twilight Sparkle, yes I can" the creature said, its voice suddenly becoming more serious "I know who you are, I know what happened to you. You were once one of us, then something happened and now you live here, down amongst the Pre Equines, with their dull electric lights, their stinking factories, and their polluting cars"

"Do I look like an alicorn?" Twilight said, a faint note of derision in her voice. "I'm not sure if you can tell, but there are no wings on my back. Only a horn on my head"

"I know what happened to you, Twilight. Don't try to play that game with me. You where remade to look like a Pre-Equine. Your wings were removed, your was body reshaped, and your blood purged of machines. You where sent to live amongst the Pre Equines, to prove that it could be done. There were others as well, a whole team, then something went wrong, and now it's just you, now you can't ever go back home. You knew you would be safe here, since alicorns can't leave the Levels and survive. You work here because you need to be on your guard, in case the Celestial Levels ever send agents to try and find you"

"There's just you and me in this room" Twilight said slowly. "If you're one of these agents, why haven't you killed me yet?"

"Because that's not what I was sent to do" The alicorn said. "I came to warn you. Things are moving up in the Levels, you're back on the agenda"

"What do you mean, '_things are moving_'?"

"Signs and portents, Twilight. There's indications of unusual instability within the Mire, or the Eye of Faust, if you are religious. You're not religious, are you, Twilight?"

"Not really"

"If you were, you'd say that Faust was getting restless again. You've probably noticed the pre shocks down here already, boundary tremors, warnings of zone slippage and so on. There's something inside Canterlot that no-pony really understands, not even the alicorns, and it's got a lot of us in the Levels rattled. The ponies who sent you down here, the ones you're hiding from, they want you back"

"I'm useless to them now" Twilight said in a flat voice. "They'd have no need for something like me. I'm an outdated model, by now the project will be at lest three generations further ahead"

The alicorn shook its head, the movement seemed weaker than before. The damage caused by the zone shift must have been starting to take greater effect. "Unfortunately, Twilight, that's not the case. There's information in your head they'd very much like to suck out, and if they can't, well ... they'll kill you just to make sure no one else can get at it"

"Who else cares?"

"The ponies who sent me. They'd like to get their hooves on the information in your head as well; the difference is we'd rather keep you alive"

"Then I'll hide" Twilight replied, licking her lips. "I've been hiding for nine years, I'm pretty good at it"

"You've already tried hiding, and that hasn't worked. We tracked you down easily enough after all, once we put our minds to it. Their agents probably already have a trace on you by now, sniffing out your forensic trail. Running is your only option. Being here is already pushing them to their limits, they won't be able to track you if you cross zones"

"Leave Neon Heights?"

The alicorn licked his lips. "Leave Canterlot, go all the way down and out into the great wide open. It's safe to say that's your only shot at survival"

"There's nothing out there" Twilight said, shaking her head. "And even if I made it past Everfree forest, it's hundreds of miles to Manehattan. I'd never survive the wasteland, not even pegausi can fly that far"

"There's enough for survival" the alicorn snapped irritably, his brows furrowing in anger. "If you've survived down here, then you'll cope out there. What matters the most is that the information inside your head mustn't reach your hunters. I didn't take on a suicide mission to hear you say that you wouldn't even bother to try"

Twilight frowned back at the creature. "And why do they care now, hey? You never gave me an answer" Twilight's hoof, though still in the grip of the alicorns, lowered a fraction of an inch. The needle coming that bit closer to piercing the alicorns coat.

Feeling the mare exert her strength, the alicorn tried to push back on her hoof. However, the zone damage had taken its toll, and he was too weak to stop Twilight from lowering the needle. "The work you where involved in was only ever the tip of the iceberg" he said, his voice strained from trying to push her back. "It was part of a project, a covert program designed to create an occupying force of alicorns with sufficient built in tolerance to different zones to occupy the entirety of Canterlot"

"I know that" Twilight deadpanned. "I believe there was a reason I was assigned to the project"

The alicorn gave her a humorless bark of laughter. "True, true, but now's not the time to get bitchy. Without you, the work stalled. But now, with the prospect of a massive zone slip, the project has been accelerated. They want that occupying force and they want it soon, which means they want your knowledge"

"And what do your ponies want? For all I know, you could want the exact same thing, except a different ruler on the throne"

The alicorn smiled again. "True, we want the same thing, your knowledge. However, we would use it for a different purpose"

"It seems to me that the safest thing to do what have been to kill me"

"That was ... considered, I won't lie to you about that" the alicorn gave Twilight a weak, pitying smile. "But in the end, it was agreed that you were simply too valuable for that. We can't see your knowledge wasted, not with all the potential it has"

Twilight lessened the pressure she was putting on the alicorns hoof, raising the needle slightly. "Then help me get back home"

"That's not an option. The best we can do is to warn you to get out, after that you're on your own. Can you leave Canterlot without being followed, Twilight?"

"I don't know"

The alicorn frowned again. "if you can't be certain, then there is very little point in even trying. If they know that you've left it's only a matter of time before they send a newer model after you. Is there anyone else you can turn to, anyone else who can help you?"

After a moment of thought, Twilight answered. "Yes ... there is somepony who could help"

"A Pre Equine?"

"A pony who has helped me from time to time, yes"

"Can he be trusted?"

"He knows what I am, he's never betrayed me"

"And now?"

"I see no reason to assume otherwise"

"If this pony can help you, then go to him. But only if your trust in him is absolute, if not then you'll have to go on your own"

"How long am I supposed to be away?"

"You'll know when it's safe to return"

"I can't just drop everything and leave, I've got a life down here"

At that the alicorn genuinely smiled, chuckling slightly until he began to cough. "Our intelligence says differently, Twilight. No special some-pony, no family, just your work. You cut open corpses day in and day out, and lately you've started to look like one as well"

Twilight stared at the alicorn. "And you sacrificed yourself for this?"

"To reach you, Twilight? Yes, yes I did, even though I knew that my death would not be an easy one. But I also knew that if I could reach you, and persuade you to take your own survival seriously, that some good might come from it. Something that would make my own demise seem a small price to pay"

"I don't even know your name"

"Do you remember yours?"

"No, they scrubbed that from my mind when they layered in the new memories"

The alicorn smiled one last time, his face sad underneath. "I'll take that injection now, if you have no objections. You don't have to feel bad about this, it was my choice to come here. Just don't waste this chance"

"I won't" Twilight made sure that the syringe was still free of air, before gently piercing the alicorns coat with the needle. "Hold still, this won't hurt"

She pushed the syringe in and squeezed the plunger.

"How long?" the alicorn asked, smiling weakly as he released her hoof and laid back on the dissection table. The creature sighed weakly, a contented sort of noise as he visibly sagged.

"A couple of minutes, maybe less"

"That's good"

"I never got your name, you know" Twilight said, feeling odd that she had just delivered death to another creature, even one as alien as an alicorn.

The alicorn looked up at her, the smile still on his face. "In another time, another place, you and I were very close, Twilight, very close indeed"

"We were ... lovers?" Twilight asked hesitantly. How could she be lovers with this creature? She didn't even remember her old life, let alone something as significant as who her mate was.

"No, no, Faust forbid" the creature said, smile still in place. "My name is Shining Armour, and I was ... I was ... " the creature shook its head slowly. "No ... never mind, you probably won't even remember me"

"It's nice to meet you, Shining Armour" Twilight said, taking one of the creatures hooves and shaking it gently.

"It's nice to meet you too, Twilight Sparkle" the alicorn replied, his eyes suddenly widening. "Oh, that reminds me. There's something I forgot to tell you"


	3. Chapter two: Joes Donuts

Gears whirred, an electromechanical telephone exchange hummed with the half caught sounds of a hundred different conversations. Relays tapped in and out, jumping from line to line until with a final clunk of something sliding into place, the dial tone came to life, purring like a cat bathing itself in the summer sun.

However, it didn't help that Donut Joe didn't pick up until at least the eleventh ring.

"Who the fuck is this?"

"Twilight"

"Ah, Twilight. My favourite little freak" Joe chuckled down the line. In the background could be heard the usual accompaniment of bar noises. The clinking of cider mugs, the coarse and harsh laughter of drunks. Somewhere a time-bell for a boxing match began to ring, the sound distorted as if it were being fed from a television or a radio set. "It's a bit early in the year, isn't it? I don't think I've got the sewing kit on me right now. One second, let me ask Caramel"

"Joe-" Twilight began, before she was cut off by the boom of Joe's voice.

"CARAMEL?"

"WHAT?!" came the aggravated reply, the response made even harsher by the spit of static it produced when it was translated down the phone line.

"DO WE HAVE THE SEWING KIT? TWILIGHT'S CALLING!"

"IT'S A BIT EARLY IN THE YEAR, ISN'T IT?"

"THAT'S WHAT I SAID!"

"Joe, seriously, I'm not calling about that" Twilight half yelled into the phone, glancing warily behind her.

She was currently hidden in a semi-secluded back room of the Sugar Cube Corner bakery, one hoof cupped around the speaking end of the telephone. Behind her, through the open doorway that led out to the bakery proper, Mrs Cake, co-owner and operator of the establishment, watched her with a mixture of confusion and mild curiosity.

The Cake's had been only too happy to let one of their more regular customers use their phone, but Twilight knew that she had to be careful on what she said. The Cake's were lovely ponies, but she couldn't trust anyone at the moment, for all she knew the agents of the Celestial Levels could be watching her right now.

On the other end of the phone, Twilights interruption had gone unheeded.

"YEAH, WE'VE GOT THE SEWING KIT! BUT WE'RE ALL OUTTA ANTI-SEPTICS!" Caramel was shouting, his voice barely recognizable over the spitting static of the connection and the rowdy shouts of drunk patrons as the boxing matches time-bell rang out again.

"I THOUGHT I SENT YOU GET MORE THREE DAYS AGO?!"

"BULLSHIT! YOU TOLD ME YOU WERE GOING TO DO IT!"

"LET'S NOT GET INTO THIS RIGHT NOW! I'M SURE TWILIGHT CAN BRING SOME FROM THE MORGUE" Twilight face hoofed as Joe returned his attention to the call "Yeah, we got the kit. But the problem is that we've run out of anti-sceptic formula. We can do this if you want, but you'll have to bring some from the morgue"

"JOE!" Twilight hurled down the phone, capturing the stallion's attention "Will you just listen to

me?"

"Ok, Twilight, I'm listening. Just keep a lid on it, ok?"

Twilight sighed, her hoof cupped at the bottom of the phone coming up to massage at the bridge of her muzzle "Joe, I'm not calling about the surgery. It's the other thing" Twilight glanced behind her again, relieved to note that Mrs Cake had gone back to kneading dough with her husband, and that the mare was not listening in on her conversation. "I've been found out, they're looking for me"

As quick as that, Joe was all business.

"Do you know, or do you think you know?" Joe didn't need to tell her there was a big difference, on a matter as shaky as her heritage, there was no margin for error.

"I know for certain, something ... happened today, down at the morgue"

"Where are you calling from now?"

"Sugar Cube Corner"

"Right, Twilight, listen very carefully to me" Joe said, his voice calm in the way only a pony who had a fair amount of expertise in shady dealings down a phone could be. "This is big shit, and I know you're not the kind of filly to go jumping at shadows unless you've got a reason too. Don't bother going home; chances are they've already got the place under surveillance if they're really looking for you. Do you think you can make it down to the bar without being followed?"

"I think it can"

"Good, I'll send a message to one of my extraction agents. Everything should be ready by the time you get here"

"Thanks, Joe"

"No problem. Just remember, it's important that you stay vigilant and alert, but you've also got to look calm and relaxed too"

"Wow, Joe" Twilight dead panned "Sounds like a real easy trick to pull off"

"You used to be pretty good at this, Twilight. Just get back into the groove of things, it shouldn't be too difficult. Oh, and Twilight? One more thing"

"What?"

"Be a dear and buy me one of those sugar frosted cupcakes they sell down there, I haven't had a decent Sugar Cube Corner cupcake in ages" and with that, Donut Joe hung up the phone.

Twilight stood there, the phone receiver still pressed to her ear, before sighing at returning it to its wall mounted holster. She felt struck by the feeling that she had just put into motion something that would be impossible for anypony to stop. Joe was a mountain, an avalanche waiting to happen. It took the tiniest nudge to get him rolling, but once he had started he couldn't stop. The only option left open to him was to gain momentum, rumbling and roaring towards some cataclysmic, landscape altering event.

"Thanks for that, Mrs Cake" she said as she returned through the door and back into the bakery. As she passed by the counter she laid a few bits down and levitated a donut over to herself from one of the display baskets.

"Cheer up dear" the mare replied, smiling warmly at her as Twilight slipped her saddle bags back on an opened the door to the bakery. "I'm not sure what your problem is, but I'm sure it'll sort itself out in time, you'll see"

Twilight smiled weakly at the mare and stepped out, closing the door behind her with the faint tinkle of a bell.

"What an odd girl" Mrs Cake mused to herself. Her husband only grunted in response, his hooves kneading the dough beneath them with apocalyptic energy.

≤ΘΘΘ≥

The bus came to a rolling halt whilst on the slot, pausing just long enough for Twilight to hop off before the doors squeaked shut again and the vehicle returned to the flow of traffic. Taking a moment to get her bearings, Twilight adjusted her saddle bags, sighing slightly as the weight redistributed itself.

The saddle bags had been in her possession since she had first arrived in Neon Heights. Originally they had been part of her infiltration gear, but since she'd gained employment at the morgue they'd served a much more mundane purpose as her day to day carry bags.

The bags themselves were made out of black cloth, scuffed and faded towards the edges where wear and tear had done their work. Situated in the centre of the strap that ran across her back was an embroidered label that read '_Dr T. Sparkle_'. Both of the bags were secured by golden clasps and they both opened like a concertina, disclosing an assortment of padded pockets and receptacles she frequently used to carry medicine or paper work.

Twilight looked further back up the street and adjusted her spectacles, her modified eyes negating any restrictions their tint would have imposed on her vision. Fifth was a bad neighbourhood, even by the standards of Cheapside, the area of Neon Heights closest to the boundary with Geartown. Further up the spiral social conditions continued to improve until you hit the boundary with Circuit City, where the who's who of the Neon Heights socialite class could be found.

Joes Donuts, as Donut Joes establishment was imaginatively called, was an easy place to miss. It was located at the end of a blind alley that terminated in the rising black wall of Canterlots underlying fabric. A jet black cliff of Megastructure that rose up and up into the heavens until it was promptly jogged back to form the next ledge.

Propped up on one side of the establishment was a three story tall derelict that had once been a fairly successful taxi company, until a raid by local law enforcement exposed the entire company as an equine trafficking operation. One the other side was an electrical appliance store that had closed for the night, though it was pretty safe to assume that every item it had for sale had been acquired by dubious means.

Twilight knocked thrice on the door in rapid succession. After a moment it opened a fraction of an inch, just wide enough for somepony inside to stare out at her. Warm yellow light spilled out of the gap, accompanied by a thick cloud of trapped cigarette smoke.

"Yeah?" asked the pony behind the door, a stallion by the sounds of it.

"I'm here to see Joe"

"You're Candy?" the single eye that peered out through the crack looked her up and down. "You're a bit thin for a lap dancer, ain't ya?" Twilight simply rolled her eyes.

"I'm the Cutter"

That got a response. The stallion behind the door looked her up and down again before pushing the door wide open for her, respectfully holding it open as she stepped in. "Sorry, Miss" he said as she stepped through into the choking atmosphere of the bar. "Didn't realise you were one of Joes acquaintances, I didn't mean any disrespect" the Stallion closed the door behind her, pointing over to the bar. "Caramel should know where he's at"

Nodding her thanks, Twilight made her way through the press of ponies to the bar that ran down one side of the room. The main room of Joes Donut was long and narrow, the ceiling low overhead. The air was filled with cigarette smoke, the humidity instantly fogging up her glasses, and the rowdy shouts of patrons as they gathered round an old television that was mounted in a small nook on the wall, seemingly all of them yelling at the top of their lungs at the two stallions on the screen as they traded blow for blow.

Twilight slid off her saddlebags and hopped up onto a stool by the bar, her tail batting away at the face of an inebriated stallion as he attempted a pick up line that wouldn't work even if she were drunk out of her mind. The drunk, upon realising that his attempt had failed, muttered something to himself and promptly passed out, his head impacting with a meaty thud onto the surface of the bar.

"Well, well. Seems like the Cutter's decided to grace us with her presence" came the voice of the stallion behind the bar, Twilights head turning to find the source. Trotting up to her from behind the bar was none other than Caramel, Co-owner to Joes Donuts.

When he reached her, the stallion reared up on his hind legs, empty cider tankard in one hoof and a cleaning rag in the other. Caramels build could only be described as scrawny, no matter which way you looked at him. Rake thin, his hooves were entwined with cryptic tattoos that looked like they had been inked in with a piece of rusty metal and a bottle of low grade transmission fluid.

His mane was thick and unruly, a tangled mass of brown that fell well down his back from his current standing position. Around the base of his neck was a near invisible scar where, Twilight could only assume, he'd survived being garrotted. There must have been some lasting damage to his larynx though, as his voice constantly had a slight growling edge to it, as if he were constantly ready to rip out the throat of any pony who so much as looked at him edgewise.

"So, it's that time of the year again, is it?" Caramel growled as he finished polishing the tankard, carefully setting it down the workspace behind the bar next to the cider taps. "Shit must be getting bad if you're visiting us again so soon. When was the last time you visited, June, June Prime? I know it definitely wasn't that long ago to be sure"

"August" Twilight replied, keeping her voice down as she scanned the low hall, her eyes settling for a few moments on each occupant before moving on again. "And that's not why I'm here"

Caramel simply shrugged, reaching under the bar with a hoof to grab a bottle "Oh well. You know you're always welcome to drop by, right?" Caramel pulled out the bottle. Within was a thick brown liquid that had the same consistency as cold blood. "The usual?"

"No ice"

Caramel pulled out the stopper with a pop and grabbed a shot glass, pouring out a generous measure of laced cocoa. "Donut?"

"I'm trying to watch my weight"

"So, how's life been treating you?" he asked as he pushed the drink forward, the contents within sloshing about lazily. "I heard you were still working down at the morgue. Have you cut open anything interesting recently?"

"This and that"

"Nothing ... specific?"

Twilight paused. Could Caramel know? Joe had always told her that the secret regarding her ... unorthodox nature was something that was well kept between the two of them. He wouldn't tell Caramel, surely?

"No, not really"

The stallion behind the bar seemed to deflate slightly, his face falling as he sighed and reached for another glass. "Really? Oh, well that's a pity"

"And why's that, Caramel?"

"Got a cousin of mine who works in the Department of Public Hygiene, and he told me that the other night he got taken out on an extermination job. There have been rumours of mutants down by the boundary, so I've heard. Creatures that used to be ponies like you or me until being so close to the boundary twisted their insides up, you know, like the way that glowing waste stuff in movies turns ponies into freaks"

"And your point being?"

"Well he told me that he'd shot one, and that the Boundary Commission came along and sealed off the whole area"

"I'm pretty sure that mutants turning up near the boundary would have been in the papers, Caramel" Twilight replied dryly, taking a sip of her industrial strength cocoa and wincing as she felt fiery rivulets scorch the inside of her throat. "It probably would have made front page news. But as far as I can remember, I haven't read any articles about zone mutants recently"

"Yeah, I told him the exact same thing. But he said that a bunch of these shady types in suits came up and made off with the corpse. He hasn't heard anything about it since" the stallion shrugged, returning the bottle of cocoa to its place under the bar. "I was just thinking that since you work in a morgue that there was chance that they brought it to you"

"Sorry, Caramel. I'm afraid I haven't cut open any mutants recently"

The stallion chuckled to himself, reaching for the empty glass in front of the passed out stallion sitting next to Twilight, who was now snoring quietly. "Never mind. You know, me and Joe could always use someone who's a steady hoof with a blade. Somepony who knows their way around the anatomy, so to speak" Caramel favoured her with a devious grin. "What to cut, what not to cut. Stuff like that, if you catch my drift. What kinda injuries you can live with for a few hours and what you can't"

Twilight simply shook her head "Something tells me that you and Joe know plenty of people with those kinds of skills already"

"Maybe we do, maybe we don't. But Joe isn't as good as he used to be, the damage is getting worse. As for me, my problem is I like to make them squeal, you know? I go too far too fast" the stallion shrugged, as if he expected some sympathy for being overzealous in his interrogation techniques. "All I'm saying is that there's room in the enterprise for someone with your level of restraint. Trust me when I tell you, and I know I can speak for Joe on this matter, that there's potential employment in this business for you"

Caramel lifted up the now clean tankard to the dim light, spinning it as he searched for any blemishes he might have missed. Content with the job, he set it down by its companion. "I know ponies as high up as the Cyber Polities who'd pay good money for a pony with your skills to help them with their ... inconveniences"

"If I took on a job like that, I'd be no better than Joe in a month"

"True, but at least you'd be set for life. Just remember, if work ever dries up at the morgue, you know where to find us"

"I don't think that'll be happening any time soon"

"You've got a point there, with it being a morgue and all"

"Besides, I'm not looking for any alternative employment at the moment" Twilight smiled, giggling slightly before finishing the rest of her drink. Alcohol had no effect on an alicorns physiology, but the taste wasn't so bad and the drink helped her to blend in with the rest of tonight's patrons, and as far as she could tell, no one seemed to be paying any particular attention to the skinny mare talking to the scrawny stallion.

"I see" Caramel looked left and right before leaning across the bar, his voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. "So what's your deal? You in trouble or something?"

"To the best of my knowledge, Caramel. I've never been out of it"

Caramel rolled his eyes "I'm talking about something other than whatever shit brought you into Joe's sphere of influence" Caramel fixed her with his blue eyes, one eye brow lowered in a half frown. "Which, by the way, I've never seen fit to pry about, just as I've never seen fit to pry into whatever it is when you and Joe go into the backroom with that sewing kit. Nope, Momma taught me to not go sticking my muzzle in other ponies business"

"That's good" Twilight told him with a sweet smile, her voice taking on an innocent tone. "But I'm assuming that there's no need to start now, is there?" Caramel was a part of Joe's organisation, a big part if her suspicions were correct. But to the best of her knowledge, or which she had a considerable amount, the stallion had no idea about the truth of her identity. As far as she knew, Joe had never told another living soul anything of what he knew.

Caramels features darkened for a moment before he began to chuckle, starting as a low, and guttural rasping before slowly rising to a just as animalistic crescendo. "Nope, Twilight, I guess there isn't" the stallion leaned back and got back on all fours, taking one of the tankards he'd polished and bringing it up to one of the cider taps, pouring himself a large glass of the golden liquid. "After all, we've all got our own dirty little secrets to keep, don't we?" he winked at her before chuckling again. "Joe's round the back, in his usual haunt" he told her, raising the tankard to his lips and proceeding to down his drink.

Twilight hopped off her stool and slipped her saddle bags back on. But as she reached for some bits to pay for her drink, Caramel raised a hoof. "No need, it's on the house. Least I could do, with you coming to visit and all"

Joes haunt, as Caramel had so eloquently put it, was a small alcove set back from the bar by a low arch that Twilight had to stoop her head slightly to pass through. The tiny enclave was just about big enough to fit a table and the chairs around it, leaving little room for anything else. This lack of space, combined with its narrow entrance, gave the nook a claustrophobic sense of entrapment about it.

Today the stallion was nursing a cigarette; a half-empty shot glass containing his usual dosage of laced cocoa, and as according to his usual custom was sitting alone. There was something about the unicorns demeanour, some subtle, hard to articulate expression and posture that seemed naturally repel other ponies away from him.

He was a big stallion, the complete opposite of his business partner Caramel, the stained white uniform her wore barely fitting to his bulky frame. His beige coat complimented his chocolate brown mane, through which the thick mass of his stubby horn stuck up. A pair of intelligent green eyes watched Twilight as she approached, noting in only a few moments every telltale feature he could.

"I was starting to think I'd imagined that phone call" Joe said, his voice a deep threatening rumble that sounded suspiciously like that of a dragon. He blinked and then twitched. "Traffic in Cheapside's a bitch, ain't it?"

"I made it here in one piece"

"True, now take a seat. At least look like you're going to be in my presence for more than five seconds"

Twilight eased into the seat opposite the bottled up force that was Donut Joe, depositing her saddlebags on the floor next to her. "Thanks for agreeing to see me" she said, feeling slightly more relaxed now that she was around company that she could trust. Joe took a drag on his cigarette, the orange glowing tip the only bright thing in the dim illumination of Joes little hidey-hole. His hoof shook terribly as he lowered the cigarette to the ash tray, as if somepony had stuck a hook in it and was jerking it on an invisible string.

"Given the nature of what we're about to deal with, I took the liberty of calling Rainbow Dash in advance. I hope you don't mind"

"Who's Rainbow Dash?"

"She's one of my extraction specialists and a good one too. You'll like her, trust me on that one"

Twilight blinked in confusion "Extraction? Who said anything about extraction?"

"I did" Joe stated in a matter of fact voice, taking another shaking puff on his cigarette. "And we're doing it, no buts. All the pieces are already falling into place, nothing to do now but sit back and let the current take you"

"Whoa, whoa" Twilight said, raising her hooves slightly. "Joe, aren't we jumping the gun a little here?"

"You told me enough of what was going on during our little telephone conversation. Joining up the dots is one of my specialties, Twilight. I thought you knew that? I joined up the dots where you were concerned, didn't I?"

"That's because it was your job back then" Twilight said, still a little befuddled by the speed at which things had advanced. One moment she was just coming to talk Joe about going into hiding some place, and now she was waiting for an extraction specialist to come and pick her up. "That was back before you hung up the badge and quite the force"

"Yep, sure was" Joe said in a nostalgic tone, downing what was left of his drink in one go. "Sometimes I think quitting the force was the worst mistake I ever made. That and not turning you in, of course"

"Do you want to know what happened, or not?" Twilight snapped irritably. Without waiting for an answer, she told him about the alicorn and the conversation she shared with it during its own autopsy. "It said its name was Shining Armour. Do you have any idea who that is?"

Not surprisingly, Joe shook his head "Sorry, Twilight. I'm a bit out of date with my knowledge when it comes to the who's who of the Celestial Levels"

"Well, after that I gave it the Morphax-55. Look, I know you told me not to, but on the way over I drove past my apartment. I know you told me I shouldn't go back home, but I didn't slow down or anything"

Joe gave her an emotionless look before taking another drag on his cigarette. "Told you not to do that, Cutter"

"Nopony say me. I don't think even an agent from the Celestial Levels could have spotted me when I went past"

"We can only hope. Did you see anything suspicious when you went past? Anything that shouldn't have been there"

"The only thing I saw was a van from the Boundary Commission that was badly disguised as a van from the Department of Public Hygiene. But, given the nature of the situation I'm in, I'm assuming it has nothing to do with me"

"Right now I wouldn't make assumption on just about anything. But that business with the van, it's not just Mayor Mare's administration getting twitchy. Word on the street is that the Tectologists up in the Levels are detecting twitches in the Mire, signs of some serious instability. Admins up and down Canterlot have been hoarding pharmaceuticals for weeks now"

"There have been some shortages in the morgue, deliveries keep getting later and later" Twilight admitted, her mind imaging the morgues dwindling inventory with its empty, dust covered shelves. "But I just thought that was to do with issues in the supply chain, or that something had gone wrong with production"

"Nothing's wrong with either of them according to my contacts. Besides, all you have to do is just look at the pattern that this trouble is causing. These shortages and delays, your morgue isn't the only one with those kinds of problems, Twilight. This is too coordinated to simply be a scare, too deliberate. Word is that even the Celestial Levels are bracing themselves for a storm, and if the alicorns have something to fear, then we're all fucked"

Joe took a final drag and stubbed out his cigarette, his horn igniting with an ethereal glow as he magically pulled a cigarette packet from a pocket in his uniform and lit it, placing the item on his lips. "When you get past all the scare mongering that's going on, the message is simple. There's a big shift coming, a realignment so major that it could hurt the alicorns just as badly as it could hurt us" Joe shrugged and gave Twilight a smile that was somewhere between pitying and sympathetic. "Hate to break it to you, Twilight. But it sounds to me that with the alicorns bracing themselves and all, somepony up in the Levels has decided you're a loose end that needs to be cut"

Twilight paused for a few moments to digest this information in her mind, every cell processing the implications of what Joe had said and how it could affect her. Eventually, he mind came up with a response. "Given what Shining Armour told me today in the morgue, something tells me that they've got something a little more extreme than tidying up in mind"

"What, you mean those buried memories of yours? Doesn't it strike you as a bit of a coincidence that after all this time the alicorns have finally decided to get at the information about the infiltration process that's in your head, just as they're preparing for a zone shift? Call me a sceptic, but I'd call that a bit of a long shot"

"Well, for all we know there really is something in my head that could make all the difference. After all, neither of us know what my previous life was like, so it can't be beyond the realm of possibility can it?"

Joe nodded in agreement. "Did the alicorn tell you how long you had to lay low for?"

"Not really. He said that something was about to change up in the Celestial Levels, that some kind of coup was being prepared. I'm guessing that if it works I can return, and if it doesn't, well ... it was always dangerous for me to be here and for anyone who tries to help me"

"This coup that the alicorn mentioned. Are we talking about something imminent, or something that's going down in a couple of years or so? Remember that alicorns are immortal after all, their version of '_soon_' might be a little bit different from ours"

Twilight shrugged apathetically, knowing full well that what Joe said was right "You're right; it could be months away for all we know, years even. But however long it takes for the alicorns to succeed, that's how long I need to be away for. From what the alicorn told me, this isn't just about me saving my own neck. If I'm valuable enough to someone up in the Levels that they would sacrifice one of their own to come warn me, than for all we know I could be the key to saving Canterlot"

"Look who's jumping the gun now" Joe gave her a half smile, the cigarette tip illuminating half of his face, exacerbating the bags under his eyes. "But still. All jokes aside, how do we know we can trust the motives of the people who came to warn you? For all we know this could all be part of some sort of elaborate trap"

"They gave me a weapon, Joe. I don't think they would have done that if they hadn't had my best interests in mind"

"This weapon which you still haven't shown me"

"I've got it with me" Twilight leaned back in her chair, hooves crossed. "You mentioned an extraction specialist. That's new news to me, Joe. Whenever we talked about this it was always you who were get me out of Canterlot, not one of your cronies"

Joe gave her a bland look, smoking snorting from his nostrils as he took a drag on his cigarette. "This may have escaped your notice, Twilight, but I'm getting a little frayed at the edges recently. Morphax-55 doesn't do anything for me anymore, not unless I dial up the dosage, and it's already pretty high"

"Looks to me as if you've dialled it up as high as it can go without killing yourself" said, shaking her head. It was true, the decline in the state of Joes nervous system since the last time they had met was much worse then she'd anticipated.

Joe accepted the pathologist's diagnosis with a powerful, twitch-like shrug, reaching up with a hoof to scratch at his temple. "The damage's taken its toll. I can't go any deeper than Geartown; much less survive beyond the border of Canterlot. I'll be able to take you as far as the Midtown train station, but after that you'll be in Dashes hooves. Sure, she's got her quirks, but she's a damn fine operator with nearly a dozen successful extractions under her belt"

"Out of how many attempts?"

Joe snorted, smoke belching from his nostrils like he was some sort of demon. "Come on, Twilight, You're getting twitchy again. What matters the most is that she can get the job done and that she's ready to go. Now then, are you going to show me this weapon that the alicorn gave you?"

Twilight looked back over her shoulder. Through the cramped archway the bar was still as lively as ever, but it seemed as though everyone was engrossed in their own debauchery. "Are you sure it's safe here?"

"Provided that whatever the alicorn gave you doesn't explode, then yes"

Twilight leaned down and grabbed her saddlebags, hoisting them up onto the table. "I suppose that if the alicorn was sent to kill me, he would have had ample time to do so at the morgue" she told Joe as she sprung one of the golden clasps that held the bags shut. "But he didn't. It's not much, but that's what my theory of their support is based on"

"We'll roll with it for now"

The final clasp came undone; Twilight pulled the bag open and stuck a hoof in, digging for something. Shortly afterwards her hoof emerged gripping a heavy bandaged object, the linen it was wrapped in stained with some sort of sticky fluid, evoking the image of a severed hoof wrapped in bandages.

Twilight laid the linen down on the table and slowly unwrapped the sticky material, moving with slow, deliberate movements to ensure that she didn't damage any of the contents within. The final strip came loose, revealing twelve smaller packages, each wrapped in their own bundle of cloth. "This is how it came out of him" Twilight explained as she bundled up the sticky linen. "In pieces"

"What do you mean '_out of him_'?"

"Each of these pieces had been surgically implanted into alicorn. I noticed the bruises the procedure left behind as soon as I unwrapped him on the plinth. Surgery must have been the only way to get the weapon down here. If anything that was obviously advanced technology had been found on his body, the cleanup crew would have boxed it up and sent it to the Conversion Bureau before i even had a chance to look at it"

"Well, at least it proves that the alicorns were serious about getting a weapon to you. Going so far as to surgically implant a weapon into one of their own shows that this was more than just an afterthought" Joes hoof gently prodded one of the parcels, his features grimacing slightly as a string of the alicorns bodily fluid stuck to his hoof when he pulled it away. "There's only one problem though. This is celestial technology from the Levels, and this is Neon Heights. Why would they go through all that effort to send down a weapon that can't function within our zone?"

"I don't think the alicorns would have gone to such extreme measures if they knew that sending this was nothing but a futile gesture" Twilight began to gently unwrap the pieces one by one, wiping off any spare residue before setting them down on the table with the cloth underneath them. The bandages had been a pristine white before, but now it had stained a sickly yellow and pink discolouration. None of the components were any bigger than Twilight hoof, and despite her best efforts, each was still covered in a thin film of blood and slime.

Joe eyed up the pieces with an inquisitive eye, one hoof tapping on the table rhythmically, as he was prone to do when thinking. "Are you sure you didn't miss anything?"

"I'm sure. Shining Armour told me exactly where to cut and how many pieces I'd find" Twilight made a sweeping gesture over the pieces. "This is all we have to work with"

Joe, grimacing slightly as he touched the alicorn artefact, picked up one of the pieces and wiped off the residue with a piece of cloth, holding the part up to his eye with a trembling hoof. Like the other pieces, it was made out of a hard, matte-silver metal.

"I didn't know what I was expecting, but I thought it would be ... heavier"

"Everything the alicorns make is light" Twilight told him "They're very good at it"

"Tell me, Twilight. How long did it take you to say 'them' instead of 'we'?"

"It's inbuilt cerebral camouflage. But just because I don't associate myself with them it means I've forgotten what I am" Twilight pulled out a fresh sheet of linen from her saddlebags and set about giving the pieces a proper clean up, wiping away the slimy residue coating each segment of the weapon. All the while, Joe watched the proceedings with growing interest, as if he were studying the opening moves of a high-stakes card game and not his friend cleaning up alien goo. One by one, Twilight cleaned up the parts and set them back on the table, the pieces so light that they barely made a sound as they were put down.

"So ... anything particularly jumping out at you?" Joe asked once the cleaning had been finished.

Twilight sat back on her chair, staring at the pieces in confusion. "I honestly have no idea where to start" Twilight sifted through the parts, picking up each in turn and examining it with a critical eye. The alicorn had given him detailed instructions on what to do with the weapon, but with all the jargon he had used Twilight was still as hopelessly lost as if she hadn't been given any instructions at all. "Joe, you wouldn't by any chance know what a fusion module looks like would you?"

"Sorry, Twilight. I dropped engineering back in college"

"You went to college?"

"Shut up, Twilight" Joe stared at the pieces for a moment longer, before he jabbed a hoof forward at four of them. "Just a guess on my part, but it looks like those pieces slot together to form some kind of ring"

Twilight picked up two of the pieces, examining them. Joes guess could have been right; from the looks of the pieces they would have formed a semicircle if joined together correctly. Twilight slid the two pieces together and felt a tiny, microscopic click as they locked together.

That was far too precise to be an accident.

"Good call Joe; we're a sixth of the way there"

"Anything started ticking in that head of yours?"

Twilight said nothing. Taking the two other brackets, she joined them together to form another semicircle and then joined the two pieces together. Again she felt that tiny click. She tried pulling the pieces apart, but they were solidly fixed together. She couldn't even spot a visible joint line; it was as if the segments had fused seamlessly together the moment they had been joined.

Twilight held up the complete ring and then slid it over her hoof. It fitted perfectly, as if the measurements had been made specifically for her. Glancing over at the other pieces, she saw an elongated pipe, a helical double spiral running its entire left. Another piece, a thick, featureless cylinder, had a single hole on one end that looked roughly wide enough to accommodate the pipe. She picked it up and slotted the pipe into the hole, again feeling that click as the two pieces engaged.

From what she could make out, she was holding some kind of focussing device. However, when she pressed it to the ring, the two pieces didn't match each other, she was still missing something.

"Wild stab in the dark here, Twilight. But something tells me that we've got a gun here"

"I'm not fond of guns"

"I am" said a new voice. "Especially when they're nice and shiny. So Joe, I'm guessing this is the new package, right?"

Twilight turned away from her little model kit as a mare trotted through the arch of the alcove and into the nook. She was short enough that she didn't need to duck when she passed through the arch. Her coat was a cyan blue, the same shade as the sky on a fine summer's day. Her eyes, a bright magenta colour, seemed to sparkle with some kind of hidden mischief.

However, her mane was her most prominent feature by far. Like Caramels, it was thick and unruly. But what really set it apart was its colouration, as it was banded by six streaks of vibrant colour: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple, in that order. She was clad in a heavy olive green coat that was several sizes too big for her, a pair of wings emerging from two holes in the back. If Twilight had to guess her age she would have put the pegasus somewhere between fifteen and twenty.

"Ah, Rainbow Dash, I see you've finally arrived" Joe gestured to Twilight. "I'd like you to meet Dr Twilight Sparkle, a personal friend of mine. She is, as you correctly guessed, the package you'll be smuggling. I was just reassuring Miss Sparkle on what a fine job you were going to do of getting her out of Canterlot"

"I hope you told her that this isn't going to be some kinda joyride"

"I'm under no illusions" Twilight said.

"Looking at three hard days to get you out, if every goes as planned. Which, of course, it mostly won't. Three days of roughing it up, I'm talking about sleeping in the dirty and getting less rest than you've ever had in your whole life, and a shit ton of anxiety as well. Of course once the easy parts over all we have to do is find Joes contacts and hope that they're still willing to take you to Manehattan"

"Oh, don't forget the danger as well" Joe added. "Cutter here's ticked off some powerful ponies up in the Levels. They've got deep-penetration agents in Neon Heights and they'll be looking to intercept our friend here before she skips town"

"Haha, deep-penetration" Dash chuckled to herself, a foalish grin in place.

"Dash!" Joe scolded. "Please, you're in the company of polite society!" Joe shook his head as he rolled his eyes, turning his attention back to Twilight. "Dash here is one of the quickest extraction specialists in the business, even if she does have the sense of humour of a foal. She once got a guy all the way from Circuit City down to Ponyville in two days flat"

"Yep, that's me" Dash said, examining her hoof with a smug smile. "Rainbow Dash, the fastest pegasus ever" the mares expression then became noticeably more serious. "Still though, you didn't say anything about alicorns on the phone, Joe. You said that it was local heat I'd have to deal with. In my mind there's a big difference between the Neon Heights police force and deep-penetration agents from the" the mare suddenly grinned widely and began to giggle loudly to herself. "Oh man, I can't believe that. 'deep-penetration' " she said in a mock impression of Joes deep voice. However, when she noticed the unimpressed look on Joes face she soon calmed down. "Yeah, all serious now. It's not the same thing, Joe"

"One day I'm going to lose my patience when it comes to you and your jokes" Joe said, twitching slightly as he stared the pegasus dead in the eye. "Anyway, you're not saying a little thing like a bunch of alicorns is gonna scare you off the job, are you?"

"Fuck no!" Dash said, stamping a hoof "I'm not scared of a punch of alicorns. They can bring all they've got; I could still kick their rumps"

"What I figured. The bonus is, Cutter here's come into a little inheritance from a friend of hers" Joe gestured to the pieces. "Only problem is, we have no idea how to put it all together"

Dash stared at the gore stained puzzle on the table, her muzzle scrunching up slightly as she caught a whiff of the smell. "This is the weapon you two were talking about?"

"It's alicorn technology. Just a little something to give Twilight the edge, so that she can make it out of town with her coat intact"

"Looks like something Winnoa sicked up"

"Dash!" Joe chided.

"What? It does!"

"Well, whatever it looks like, you don't want to know where it came from, trust me on that" Joe reached up and ran a hoof through his mane, magically pulling out another cigarette. "So, any new insights yet, Cutter?"

Twilight stared at the as yet unassembled weapon. For a moment that parts remained a puzzle that was impossible to reconcile. Then, with a shudder of intuitive understanding, it all made sense. That piece over there combined with another element to form a kind of aperture she could slot the focussing array into. The rest of the pieces joined together into some kind of retracting deployment assembly, which would combine the focusing array to the ring around her hoof.

Combining the pieces together, she attached the focusing array and then slid the deployment assembly into place. As the anticipated click arrived, the weapon suddenly came alive around her hoof. A tracery of luminous blue lines branched out across the surface of the weapon, meshing together into a kind of spider web as if the weapon were validating its own operational integrity.

The change was so sudden that Twilight nearly flung the gun across the room in fright, squeaking as the weapon flared into life.

"Well ... looks like I was right on that one" Joe stated.

"Yeah" Twilight said in a shaking voice, hesitantly twisting her hoof to watch as the lines flickered across the surface of the weapon. "Sure looks that way"

"What I said earlier still stands though. That's celestial technology; chances are it won't even function down here"

"If it does then we're all–" Dash began.

The gun spoke.

"_Thank you for reassembling me. Please be advised that I am programmed to form a singular blood lock with the individual now holding me. If you wish for the singular blood lock to be formed with a different individual, then he or she must handle me within the next thirty seconds" the voice was hard and metallic, a slight feminine edge to it. "Please be advised that a blood lock may only be assigned once and to a single individual. I am now initiating a thirty second countdown. You will be alerted once the blood lock has been established_"

"Guess that's you, Twilight" Joe said to the mare, her face visibly pale. He had a sly smirk on his face, as if he was enjoying every moment of the proceedings.

"Maybe I should have it" Dash said, frowning slightly at the weapon. "After all, I'm the one who's going to be doing all the damage"

Twilight held her hoof at a distance, even though half of her mind was screaming at her to drop the weapon and hand it to Rainbow Dash. "There's ... intelligence in this thing, I can feel it" she said "That shouldn't be impossible, machines can't _think_ down here!"

Joe shrugged. "Things do have a tendency to keep working for a while after they've crossed in a new zone"

"Not when they've been taken apart, sewed into an alicorn, and then put back together they don't"

"Sewed into a what now?!" Dash exclaimed.

"I'll tell you later"

"Well ... fine, whatever. Just give me the gun"

"Nope. Sorry Dash, but that's Cutters toy now" Joe looked to Dash and gave her an expression that just dared her to contradict him.

"_Blood lock has now been established, thank you for your patience_" the machine spoke. "_Please be advised. Ambient conditions are such that my operation effectiveness in energy discharge mode is eighty three percent and falling_"

There was an awkward silence. "What?" Joe asked.

"_Based on the theory that current zone conditions will remain stable, I will become inoperable in energy discharge mode in approximately five hours and twenty two minutes, with an error margin of plus or minus eight minutes. Functionality will become severely compromised in three hours and forty five minutes_"

"It's already beginning to fail" Twilight said, slipping the weapon off and turning it over in her hooves.

"Five hours, that's not a whole lot of time" Joe turned to Dash. "What time to you make it?"

Dash pulled back on a sleeve of her coat to expose a silver watch and raised a foreleg to examine it. "I got nine on the dot, last outbound train for Geartown leaves at ten fifteen"

"Still doable then"

"Haha, doable"

"Dash!"

"Sorry. But in all seriousness, yes. We have to leave now though"

"Slow down!" Twilight exclaimed, feeling like she was stuck in a rapids current that was accelerating faster and faster. "I came here to discuss the possibility of leaving Canterlot, that's all. I thought we'd be making preparation for tomorrow or the day after, not leaving right now!"

"Things just went up a notch" Joe told her, giving her a look that showed he thought it should have been obvious "Besides, that alicorn told you not to hang around. For all we know the Celestial Levels agents could try and make a grab for you tonight, let alone wait for tomorrow"

"I don't know Dash. How can I trust that she's any good?" Twilight glanced over to Rainbow Dash. "No offense"

"None taken"

"Dash works for me, which should be all the recommendation you need" Joe looked over expectantly at Rainbow Dash. "I trust you came prepared

Dash made a face. "Shit, I forgot"

"Dash!"

Dash smiled before rearing on her hind legs and pulling her coat open. Stitched to the insides of the coat were an array of armaments and equipment, each item assigned to its own little pouch. There was a sub machine gun, a revolver, an automatic, a pistol, some kind of miniature crossbow type device, and an assortment of blades, some for throwing and some for close combat.

There were also bullets, magazines, powder boxes, and an apothecaries wet dream of colour coded vials and stoppered bottles.

"I didn't forget" Dash said with a grin.

"Told you she was good" Joe said with a smile, pushing his chair back and standing up to his full, considerable height "And now, Cutter. It's time to let you in on a little operational secret of mine. I trust that it has occurred to you how foalish it would be for a stallion in my position to let himself get trapped in a room as small as this?"

"Now that you mention it ... "

Joe produced a ring of cast iron keys from the pocket of his uniform and then bucked the section of panelled wall behind him, the bang it produced echoing around the tiny alcove. For a few moments nothing happened, and Twilight was about to say how stupid Joes action was when a seemingly secure section of the wall opened inwards with a creek.

"What's that?" Twilight asked, staring at the wall of inky blackness beyond the small partition.

"Exactly what it looks like of course, a secret tunnel" Joe handed the keys over to Dash, who promptly stowed them away in a pocket of her jacket. "You go on ahead; I'll bring up the rear"

"I bet you will"

"Dash!"

Dash grinned; Joe made a threatening growl at the back of his throat. Hoping to prevent a fight and diffuse the situation, Twilight spoke up before Joe vented his frustration. "Joe, you don't need to come with us. I'm sure Dash will help me out just fine"

"I don't doubt that she will" Joe said, glaring balefully at the pegasus mare before relenting. Twilight sighed inwardly. '_Crisis averted_'. "But I still promised I'd take you as far as the train station, and I keep my promises" Joe seemed to direct that last part at Dash, who just grinned all the more.

Dash pushed the section of panelling inward, turning the small hole into a gaping maw, the darkness beyond swallowing her up as she stepped through. Twilight, pausing long enough to slip her saddlebags back on and check that the alicorn gun was secure around her hoof, quickly followed after her into a narrow tunnel, the ceiling clearing her horn by only a few inches.

Ahead of her, Dash had pulled out a small electric torch from somewhere, and in the small beam of light it produced Twilight could see another door blocking their passage.

This one was a thick plate of metal that look strong enough to stop a train dead in its tracks, or at least a very determined safe cracker. Dash took the jangling ring of keys and pushed one hard into the lock, grunting with effort as with an audible clang the door opened. She pushed the door open, a heavy draught of thick, humid air blowing out of the passage beyond to smack Twilight in the face.

"Where does this tunnel lead to?" Twilight asked, squinting in the faint light of Dash's electric torch"

"Out"

Behind them, Joe pushed the first door closed until there was only a tiny beam of light, only an inch or so wide, to indicate where the entrance was located. When he stepped through the second door he produced another set of keys from somewhere on his personage and locked the door. The sounds of the bar, which had been only muffled before, were now completely silenced as the metal plate swung shut, its internal mechanisms grinding as the lock was slid back into place. All that could be heard now was the faint sounds of their breathing.

They advanced into the darkness, the thin beam of Dash's torch their only protection against the encroaching darkness.

Twilight reached out with a hoof and brushed the black, marble-like surface of the Megastructure that surrounded them. It was ice cold. She had heard rumours of tunnels such as these, from her colleagues at the morgue and even in the newspapers she picked up on the way home from work. They all talked about tunnels cutting through the fabric of Canterlot, their entrances hidden away in forgotten buildings or covered by refuse in the dirtiest back alleys. It was so dark that even the enhanced vision that her alicorn eyes offered her did little to improve the situation.

The tunnels, she could only presume, must had been bored at an earlier stage in Canterlots history, back in a time when the zones were aligned in a different order and advanced mining machinery such as plasma lances could function this far down the spiral. But that could have been centuries, possibly even millennia ago. Nothing even remotely like that could function within the boundaries of Neon Heights today and local machinery couldn't so much as scratch the surface of the Megastructure, let alone bore a tunnel.

It would have taken lifetimes to dig this far manually.

"You never told me about these tunnels" Twilight called over her shoulder to Joe, who only made a sort of mocking snort in reply.

"That's kinda the whole point of a secret, Cutter. You keep it to yourself"

"I didn't think you and I had any, Joe. Given what you know about me. Now I'm starting to wonder what else I don't know about"

"Joe's a businessman by nature" Dash said, butting into their conversation. "He might have made you think that you and he had a special relationship, that you were more than just a close customer, but in the end you're nothing more than just another one of his clients. Isn't she, Joe?"

"Cutter's way more than a client, Dash"

"I bet she is"

"Dash!

"Sorry. But seriously, what's up with that nickname?"

" '_Cutter_' is Joe's idea of wit" Twilight said, stooping slightly to prevent her horn from scraping rather painfully against the roof. "I work as a pathologist in the morgue, I cut things open, so he thought it made a good joke. The positive side of it is that he doesn't have to use my real name in public, but I would really prefer it if you could call me Twilight"

"If Cutter is good enough for Joe than it sure as hell is good enough for me"

"Thanks. Is it going to be like this all the way to ... where was it again?"

"Manehattan, that's where I'm taking you"

"I've heard of it before"

"Manehattan's on one of the semaphore lines" Joe said, easily keeping pace despite his large bulk in the confines of the tunnel. "Don't worry, Cutter, we'll keep in touch"

"So is Dash coming with me the whole way?"

"Piss off!" the mare said indignantly.

"Dash!" came Joes expected reprisal.

"Sorry" Dash muttered, looking back at Twilight. "Nah, I'm only taking you to the borders of Everfree. After that you'll hook up with a bunch of traders and they'll take you the rest of the way. Mind you though, keep an eye out for Skulls and Timbers"

"So they're ponies I can trust?"

"They'll see you right. But once you reach Manehattan you're on your own, have to find your own lodgings and employment. Though, with you being a medicine mare, I don't think that'll be a problem for you"

"Just so long as it isn't the employment Caramel had in mind for me"

"He does get carried away with the whole torturing business, yes" Joe admitted from the back. "But you've still got to admire a stallion who enjoys his work"

"By the way" Dash cut back in. "what're you going to do if they've already got the pathologist job covered?"

"I've got medical training" Twilight explained, patting her saddlebags. "I can give a diagnosis, prescribe drugs, and perform basic surgical procedures"

"That's good" Dash said with a smile. "Plenty of disease out there to treat, provided it doesn't get you first"

"Well aren't you just a ray of Celestias sunshine? I can see that these next free days are just going to fly by"

"Thank you! I'll be here all week"

"Haha, don't let her get under your coat, Twilight" Joe chuckled. "She's an acquired taste to be sure, but she'll grow on you. Dash likes you really, I can tell. She's just keeping her distance, making sure she doesn't get too closely acquainted with the package"

"Well, that might have something to do with how most of them tend to never show up again" Dash added. "I don't think I'll ever really see Dr Sparkle again after this"

"Joe seems to think I'll make a comeback"

"Of course I do" Joe called from the rear. "No doubt about it"

"That's because Joe's an optimist" Dash said scathingly "Always did tell him it was his biggest flaw and that he shouldn't keep getting his hopes up. Especially in a business like his" But There must have been that flicker of curiosity there, some realisation that Twilight was more than just another client. "So, how'd you get roped up in Joe's business? You another of Joes insurance scheme participants"

"It's not a protection racket!" Joe called out indignantly. "I don't do protection rackets, there's no finesse, no class"

"But you're not above setting your enemies on fire"

"That's a completely different matter altogether and you know that, Rainbow Dash"

Twilight stooped even lower, her mind filled with the odd sensation that the tunnel was getting tighter the further they delved into the depths of Canterlot. "How far are we going? This tunnel seems to be going on forever"

"We're going as far as we need to go" Dash told her, her torch flickering slightly. "There's the boundary line, we must be cutting close to one of the lower divisions. Come on you two, we need to keep up the pace or we'll miss the train. Joe, you holding up back there?"

"I'm fine"

But Joe clearly wasn't fine. From the way his breathing had started to become laboured, and how his voice had begun to weaken, Twilight could tell that his body was reaching the limits of how close it could carry him to the boundary.

The tunnel began to slowly bend to the right, the gradient beginning to drop ever so slightly. Twilight suddenly became conscious of an open shaft to their left, warm, dank air gusting from it which signalled that somewhere it was connected to the surface. She had the sensation that they were an incredible distance into the fabric of Canterlot, and she could sense the weight of the ancient Megastructure above her, resentful of the intrusion of the tunnels and wanting nothing more than to come crashing down and seal them up for an eternity.

For all the dangers that were waiting for her in Neon Heights, Twilight was very keen to leave this place soon.

"I've heard about these tunnels before, but I always thought they were just another urban myth, like the zone mutants and giant rats in the sewer lines"

"Oh, the rats are real enough, believe me on that" Joe said grimly, a hard edge in his voice inferring that he had seen such creatures with his own eyes "As for the mutants, well ... Queen Chrysalis doesn't like visitors very much"

"So the rumours are true, all of them?"

"Been using these tunnels sine I was a filly" Dash said up front, tapping her torch as the beam fluttered again. "I've been deep too, real deep. Down to where it's so dark that nothing seems to give any light. But in all that time, I've never seen anything I couldn't explain. Been scared shitless a few times, but apart from that ... " Dash fell silent, as if she had revealed a little too much of herself by admitting she had been frightened before.

"We've all been spooked, Dash. There isn't any shame in that" Joe said softly, his breath audibly heaving. "Theses tunnels aren't exactly a secret mind. Back before I quit the force, I'd been down here with a few of suspects for interrogation. We'd use the tunnels to intimidate them, scare them into talking. It helped to spread a few stories, get ponies afraid to come down here to keep the tunnels clean"

"Stories?" Twilight asked.

"Bad stuff goes on down here, stuff that they wouldn't even put in horror films" Dash said, just as her torch shut off and plunged them into darkness. The blackness seemed to have a weight behind it, something that made the absence of light itself palpable. "You can get lost down here without even realising it, happed to me a few times. Plus you can bump into ponies you don't really want to bump into, which would be Joe on a good day"

"And on a bad day?"

"They didn't call Snowflake the Wing Ripper for nothing. But still, for the most part, all the stories you've heard about these tunnels are just a steaming pile of manticore shit"

"Couldn't have put it more eloquently myself" Joe added.

"And the Mad Machines?" Twilight asked, uncomfortable at the fact Dash hadn't got the torch working again yet.

"You've been reading too many bedtime stories" Dash said, a banging noise ringing out as she wacked the torch against the floor. Each time the light would flutter into existence for moments before the darkness snuffed it out yet again. "There aren't any machines down here, Cutter, big or small. Just because these tunnels are real, doesn't mean that the shit that ponies say fills them is real" Dash wacked the torch one more time, the clang resounding down the passage as the light weakly switched back on.

"So ... neither of you two have seen anything strange down here, in the entire time you've been using the tunnels?"

"Seen a few dead bodies" Dash said nonchalantly, examining the torch before continuing onwards. "Seen a few things that could have been practically anything given the way they were cut up, but big bad machines that wander the tunnels looking for souls? 'Fraid not, Cutter. Canterlot's just some big old dildo that they shoved into the ground thousands of years ago, nothing changes down here"

"Dash!"

"Oh, come on Joe! Are you saying I can't pull any jokes whilst I'm with the package?"

"Yes!"

"Fuck!"

"Have you ever been lost down here?" Twilight asked, trying to steer the conversation away from Dash's rather immature sense of humour.

"Once or twice, especially when the package has been too busy yammering to let me think"

"Hint taken"

Dash didn't seem to be finished though. "At least being lost is a problem that you can fix. If you cross a zone boundary down here, oh man is that a different story"

"You'd hardly fail to notice if you'd crossed a zone boundary"

"Yeah you'd notice, but normally you can feel them coming, or be able to cross back over if you wanted to. You think you know about the zones in Canterlot pretty well, Cutter. But all you really know is life on the ledges, out in the open. Down here in the depths it's a different story. On the outside the zones are big enough to fit a whole city in them, but in here they just keep getting closer and closer together, all packed around the Eye of Faust, or the Mire, whichever name you wanna call it. Shit gets blurred together before it all jumbles together at the Eye, the boundaries get so close together that you can have zones only a few inches across. Makes things real hard to map, and has a tendency to kill anyone who gets in too close. That's why my lights on the blink, the mechanism can sense that we're getting close to making a transition"

"Do we have to make any crossings?"

"Not until we leave the tunnel and get on the train, the line'll take us all the way down to the border with Geartown. Of course that's only if things are the same as they were last time, which they might not be. The Clock boys are already getting wound up about it-"

"Pun intended?"

"Yes, pun fucking intended! Anyways, they're seriously getting worked up by it, and they're not alone. It's not just Neon Heights that's seeing tremors. The rest of us in the business saw it coming way back, two or three years at the least. Serious movement in the mire, some big shift coming. You don't need to be an alicorn with some fancy computer gizmo to know that some serious shit is going down. Faust ain't happy, not by a long shot" Without waiting for Twilight to state an opinion she added, "Blame the alicorns myself. Anything unexplainable, those Post Equine motherfuckers are at the top of my shit list"

"I see" Twilight said, swallowing hard as she realised she was going to be spending the next three days with a xenophobe, not exactly ideal for a mare in her position. "And that theory is based on ... what, exactly?"

"Alicorns fucking piss me off"

"Brilliant" Twilight muttered under her breath.

"Try to ignore her" Joe called from the back, he was starting to lag. "Dash just isn't a fan of the unexplainable"

They walked on in silence, Twilight not wanting to press the matter for fear that Dash might start asking questions. Still though, Dash's xenophobia told her one implicit thing, Joe had kept her secret mutual. Unless she was lying for reasons of her own, Dash had no idea about Twilights true nature.

From what she could tell about the limits of Dashs tolerance, Twilight was keen to keep it that way.

"How close to the boundary will this tunnel take us?"

"About half a league of so, maybe a bit less" Joe said from the back, really starting to fall behind now. "Can't be much further out than that I would reckon"

Twilight had a sense of the tunnel widening in all direction, and when she reached out with a hoof to touch the wall, she could only feel empty space. "Keep to the right" Dash called back. "Shit gets a little tricky here" Twilight gulped, she could make out nothing except the wavering spot generated by Dashs torch. Implicitly, she realised they must be passing some huge shaft that sank further down into the depths of Canterlot.

In the darkness, she heard the faint rustle of fabric. There was a sudden, intense burst of yellow light and a loud bang the seemed echo and reverberate from every direction, its volume increased tenfold by the confines of the area. In the after-image the light had burned into her retina, Twilight saw Dashs hoof gripping a revolver tightly, the barrel pointed downwards into the depths of the shaft.

Twilight steeled herself, her mind conjuring up the image that the three of them were about to be engulfed in a swarm of twisted, malignant creatures that lay hidden down here. But when Dash redirected the beam of her torch at her target, all that was there was a blackened carcass of a rat, a smoking hole in it.

There was a click as Dash put the safety catch back into place and the rustle of her coat as she stowed it away again.

"Nothing to see here, move along"

"We must only be a few hundred spans from the exit" Joe wheezed, his breathing heavier than ever Reckon I'd better ... turn around now, or I'm just ... gonna be slowing you down" Joe nearly bent double, gasping. "Oh, sweet Celestia I need a stiff drink" he looked up to Twilight, his eye showing he was in a fair degree of pain. "Twilight, you go ahead without me, Dash'll take care of you for the rest of the way. Make sure you ... send me a postcard when you get there ... ok? Anonymous of course, don't want you to get there and ... cock it all up"

In the gloom of the tunnel, the two unicorns shook hooves, Twilight gripping Joe tightly. "I'll be sure to, and thanks for coming this far, Joe. I know it can't have been easy for you" Twilight paused, remembering something she'd meant to give to Joe earlier "Dash, shine the light over here" she said, slipping off her saddlebags and pulling one open, revealing a motley collection of bottles and white packages. She removed one from a small pocket near the top and passed it to Joe. "Supplies have been down at the morgue recently, but I managed to spirit away some of the goods for you. It's not much, but I'm afraid it'll have to do you until I can find another source of antizonals"

Joe gripped the Morphax-55 in his hoof like it was made out of pure gold. "Did you save some for yourself, Cutter? You've got a big journey ahead of you"

"I've got enough, I can promise you that much"

Joe paused for a moment and then handed back the package, his hoof visibly shaking as he did so. "Take them, something tells me you're gonna need them a whole lot more than I am. I'm not going anywhere, but you are. So hold on to them and I'll find myself another supplier"

"I'm sure you'll find someone. Knowing all of your contacts I'd be honestly surprised if you didn't" Twilight took back the antizonals and stowed them back in her saddlebags, secretly grateful that Joe had turned them down.

"Don't you worry now, I've got my cigarettes if all else fails"

"I'd hate to break up your sweet moment" Dash called back to them. "But me and Cutter have a train to catch"

"Go" Joe said, gripping Twilights hoof firmly one last time before letting go. "And enjoy the scenery"

Twilight nodded and turned away, but then Joe called out again. "Twilight?"

"Yes, Joe?"

"Where's my cupcake?"


End file.
